The SIS agent and the KGB: Clandestine meetings in dead of night

As a young SIS agent, Kit Bennetts was an operative in the surveillance of Dr Sutch. Picture / Greg Bowker

In his book published yesterday, former SIS officer Kit Bennetts reveals for the first time how renowned public official Dr William Ball Sutch's clandestine meetings with a Soviet agent were tailed. This is the second of two edited extracts:

The penultimate Thursday of June was the 20th. This time we determined to be far more aggressive in our surveillance.

Ray Carter and another colleague followed Dr Sutch from his office to the Wellington Railway Station, where he caught a taxi to Karori. He got out of the taxi at the old Karori Post Office, just around the corner from where we had first seen the two men together at the entrance to the Bowling Club in April.

Dr Sutch crossed the road at 8.30pm and could be seen pacing up and down on the corner of Parkvale Rd and Karori Rd. He appeared to be clutching a folded newspaper across his chest.

I saw none of this. My task on the night was to follow Razgovorov. The faithful Pertsev was again driving and undertook a number of counter-surveillance manoeuvres in the dark back streets of Karori.

We were all in radio contact and we were advised that the two KGB officers were in Lancaster St, just around the corner from the embassy, where the Soviet Commercial Section was situated. I headed up Flers St, a narrow residential street that winds uphill from the main road and intersects with Lancaster St directly opposite the Commercial Section.

I drove straight into a counter-surveillance trap. As we headed up the street, we saw DC409, the embassy's big maroon Merc, stopped on Chisenall St, a cul-de-sac leading on to Flers. By the time we saw them they had seen us. Shit!

There was worse to come. Several minutes later, we ended up almost nose to nose on another nearby dark, narrow street. The two Soviets would have been in no doubt: the same small sedan, with the same driver and passenger and it had turned up twice! We had surely been burned and burned good.

If you are an intelligence officer trying to protect an operation, you are very sensitive to the merest possibility of surveillance. There is no such thing as coincidence. If you start seeing the same car more than once, you start to think about heading home for a vodka and an early night.

However, there was still a remote possibility that they were not yet certain in which case they would take evasive action while they decided what they would do next. Part of that equation would be precisely how important this month's meeting was to their plans.

The two KGB officers then drove through dark suburban streets that carried little traffic at this time of night. They were stopping, starting, doubling back and u-turning to lure the surveillance teams out into the open.

Just before 8.30pm, Pertsev pulled up in the underground car park at the Karori Mall. Razgovorov got out of DC409 and walked through the car park. Instead of taking the walkway up into the mall, he walked over to the Parkvale Rd entrance to the car park, where he stopped and looked up at Dr Sutch standing some 40m away, pacing up and down on the corner of Parkvale Rd and Karori Rd.

Razgovorov stood in the shadows and watched for more than five minutes. He then turned on his heels and walked briskly back to the waiting Pertsev. The two drove back to the embassy, where Razgovorov remained only long enough to drop Pertsev and move over into the driver's seat. He left the embassy moments later and drove straight home.

The vodka and an early night? Shit!

Dr Sutch remained at the corner until 8.45pm when he, too, took his leave. He walked along Karori Rd towards the city and hailed a cab home.

I blame myself for the failure that evening. We now ran the very real risk of seeing the operation turn to dust in our hands. If the Soviets suspected compromise in a case like this they would take it underground in a heartbeat. But we were lucky. Razgovorov's actions over the next few months suggested that he considered Thursday June 20 a one-off. For our part, we knew we had run out of chances.

A radical change in tactics was called for. We were confident that the next scheduled meeting would take place at 8.30pm on Thursday, July 25. We were equally confident it would be in Kelburn or Karori. We decided we would not attempt to follow the KGB case officer and his operational driver. Instead, we set up static OPs (observation posts) throughout Karori and along the three main routes into the city so we could monitor his movements but not physically follow him.

Thursday July 25 was a cold, overcast winter's day but the evening seemed to have cleared up. By 6.45pm, all the static OPs were staffed.

At 6.45pm, Jamie Mercer and I were on the street outside Dr Sutch's office in the ANZ building. We could see the lights on in his first-floor office suite. We had made a pretext call to his business number earlier to confirm that he was there.

Dr Sutch left his office just after 7pm. He left the lights on and for that reason we had no warning of his impending departure. We nearly missed it. He walked into Lambton Quay and bought fish and chips. He then returned to his office to eat them.

Just before 8pm, we saw the first-floor lights go out and Dr Sutch emerged from the building. We expected him to take a taxi, but surprisingly he slowly walked around the corner and on to Lambton Quay. For the first time he did not hail a cab from in front of his office. He walked slowly to Cable Car Lane, bought a ticket and climbed aboard the rear carriage.

I too bought a ticket and boarded the front carriage. I could feel Dr Sutch's eyes boring into the back of my head as we sat alone, the only two passengers yet to arrive. This phenomenon is called surveillance guilt. You are following someone and while your behaviour is perfectly natural and does not draw the attention of anyone, you feel that everyone is staring at you or the target must have seen you and made you, when in fact no one has even noticed you.

Jamie hung back. He was tossing up whether he would return for the car and meet me at the top in case Dr Sutch got a taxi at the top terminal or whether he too would board the cable car. He elected to board. A few more passengers straggled aboard and I felt a little more comfortable.

We rattled up to the top of the hill, stopping at several stops on the way. All the remaining passengers alighted at the Kelburn Terminal. Jamie and I mingled as best we could with six or seven others and dropped in behind Dr Sutch as he started to walk slowly along the footpath on the northwestern side of the street.

For the first time he seemed wary. He kept looking behind. He saw nothing; we were better than that.

In the meantime, Razgovorov had driven alone in DC409 and parked it in Plunket St, near the Kelburn shops. He got out of his car, crossed into Upland Rd and began walking towards the cable car about 1km away. It was about 8.20pm when the two men walked toward each other, coming from opposite directions on the footpath on the same side, the northwestern side of Upland Rd.

I was further back on the other side of the road as the two men approached each other. Then they did a curious thing: they passed each other without a flicker of recognition.

In spite of the distance, I recognised Razgovorov well before he passed his agent and when they crossed without speaking I knew immediately what this meant; the KGB handler was checking Dr Sutch's tail.

He was looking up and down both sides of the street looking for parked cars with people in them, foot surveillants' sudden movements, anything out of the ordinary. We were better than that, too!

However, as Razgovorov continued towards me, I was conscious of the fact that I did not need a burn this early in the evening. It is true that all he would have seen was a man in dark trousers and dark woollen overcoat but in his place I would have registered it for later.

When you do this sort of work, you tag people: big nose, blue skirt, dark overcoat, long hair, attractive and so on, and if you see them again, you start re-evaluating the security of your operation. I didn't want Razgovorov to tag me: short guy, black coat. Remember, there's no such thing as coincidence.

There were two other people walking along the pavement near me, both from the cable car. I came to a house on my left, opened the gate and walked up the side of the building. I passed the front window, the curtain drew back and a young man watched. I had hoped to be able to wait in the shadows until Razgovorov had passed and then come back on to the street but now I had been seen by the householder and had to account for myself.

I continued along the side of the house to the entrance door and knocked, thinking of what pretext I could use: Is Mike here? Do you know where Glasgow St is? A dishevelled-looking young guy answered the door. Yeah?

I beamed at him and said in a clear, enthusiastic voice, Have you heard the good news about Jesus?

He looked at me and then said in an equally clear voice, Ah, f ... off, and gently closed the door. As I did his bidding and stepped back on to the street, Razgovorov had passed and Dr Sutch was still walking towards the Kelburn shops.

The timing was perfect. Razgovorov turned down into Glen Rd and waited for the return of Dr Sutch, who walked almost all the way to the Kelburn shops, before slowly turning around and walking back. He also turned left into Glen Rd, where he saw the waiting Razgovorov further down the hill. Razgovorov turned, as did Dr Sutch, and the Russian followed Dr Sutch back up Glen Rd, where they stopped outside an open carport about 20m from the Upland Rd corner. At 8.30pm by my watch, the two men met and stepped back into the shadows of the carport. They remained together talking quietly for about three to four minutes.

Jamie Mercer was covering Upland Rd and I was on a small shortcut footpath and steps leading from Upland Rd to Glen Rd. I was joined here by Dan Trainer and together we watched. The two men were standing close and in almost complete darkness. They looked to be talking but we could not hear them. When they separated, Dr Sutch walked slowly down Glen Rd and into Rimu Rd. Razgovorov walked the 20m up to Upland Rd.

Almost as he arrived, the consul from the Soviet Embassy, Boris Belousov, pulled up in another embassy vehicle, DC408, a yellow Toyota Crown.

Razgovorov leaned into the open passenger window. After a moment or two, he retraced his steps down Glen Rd and Belousov drove off, making a u-turn at the Glasgow St intersection and hotfooting it back to the embassy. Razgovorov rejoined Dr Sutch and the two men talked for another five minutes, further down and around the corner in Rimu St.

When they separated, Razgovorov returned to his car and drove back to the embassy. After a short time there, he drove back to his home.

Dr Sutch walked down Rimu St, up the steep steps and path at the bottom to Upland Rd and back down beside the cable car. He then retraced his earlier steps along Upland Rd towards the meeting place. He crossed the road and headed down Glasgow St towards the city. Moments later, he hailed a taxi and he too went home.

* Dr Sutch was arrested for spying in 1974 after police watched him meet a Russian diplomat. The next year he was acquitted of charges alleging that he had betrayed official secrets.

* Published by Random House New Zealand, $37.